


Frequent Courtesies and Favours

by Corycides



Category: Killjoys (TV)
Genre: Gen, Yuletide 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-29
Updated: 2015-11-29
Packaged: 2018-05-04 00:40:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5313374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corycides/pseuds/Corycides
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Quad runs on joy and favours</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LithiumDoll](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LithiumDoll/gifts).



Pree and Pawter

Six hugely pregnant Vessels had been a coup for Land Kendry, waddling proof of the viability of the Vessel Program. Six healthy infants brought to term on Qreshi soil, had been an embarrassment to Land Simms. They had wanted a singular heir, not a surfeit of close-born spares - five were too many even to farm out to Leith. Families had tried before - it had been messy.

Unfair, perhaps, to have been that close to privilege and lost it. So much of history was unfair, though, and the books never changed for whining about it. 

Too parsimoniousness to waste their genetic investment, one infant had been presented to the Nine and five extraneous infants had been surgically reconstructed and seeded out in the quad...for whatever sort of rainy day required a genetic copy of a cadet branch family heir.

As it turned out, this particular rainy day involved baby-sitting the exiled heir of the family line as she wallowed her way through a sea of self-pity - albeit fairly well-deserved - and cheap Hokk. Pree uncorked a bottle and splashed another measure into the grimy cup clutched in the polished (still, although Westerly had already started to take the gloss of it) young Qreshi’s hand.

‘They just sent me away,’ she said, looking up at him with wet, blood-shot eyes. ‘I’m their daughter and they just sent me away.’

‘As much as it pains me to come down on the side of authority,’ Pree said, folding his arms. ‘You had killed someone.’

Pawter rubbed her hand across her face, pulling the pretty into ugly lines. ‘They don't care about that,’ she said bitterly. ‘He wasn't anyone important, just a Leithian come Qresh for treatment. They sent me away because I…’

She stopped, tongue darting out to wet her lips. It wasn't with any malice that Pree told the truth - ‘because you’re a drug addict’ - but the quicker she accepted the new reality the better it would be. There was no white knuckling your way off the particular ride that Pawter had climbed on. She flinched and snuck a snaking, nervous look around. Pre snorted at her.

‘The one beauty of Westerly,’ he told her. ‘No one cares.’

‘It was just to get me through,’ she said, staring into her Hokk like it had the answers. ‘I didn't mean to...it was just the once. I thought the stories about how addictive it was were propaganda, scare the good Qreshi students straight.’

‘They weren’t.’

She gave a bitter laugh and toasted him with her nearly empty glass. ‘No shit.’ 

It was an hour later that she cycled back around, with a drunk’s persistence over their woes. ‘I thought I could handle it, I had been handling it. I wouldn't have gone in that day if I’d known, if I’d suspected, it would be that bad. I wouldn’t have.’ She bit her lip, chewing it bloody and didn't look up from her drink. ‘He had kids, they were there waiting for him. It was a simple operation, he should have woke up.’

Oh, poor little cow. Pree leaned on the bar and watched her drop her curly head onto her arms with weary pity. She actually cared. That was going to make it harder.

‘Come on,’ he said, nodding to one of the upstairs boys to take over behind the bar. ‘Let’s get you to a bed.’

He pried her off the stool, steadying her Hokk-stagger walk to the stairs. She sniffed sadly against his shoulder, snotty wet through his shirt. Kei had quit a week ago - he’d had a better offer on Leith, although that wasn't going to last - so Pree dropped his drunk new responsibility off in the vacant room. She flopped out on the bed and looked around, pointing at a glossy black speculum Kei had hung on the wall.

‘I had one of those,’ she told Pree solemnly. 

‘Don't think you used it for the same things, pet,’ Pree said, tugging her boots off.

Pawter giggled. ‘You’d be surprised then,’ she said. Reaching down she started tugging at her belt, numb fingers fighting with it like it was a Scarback’s penitence tie. ‘If you wanna see…’

OK. No. Even if she wasn't his blood relative, she wasn't his type. He caught her hands and wrapped them safely around a throw for later. ‘No need.’

She pouted and stared at him, wide eyed and sad. ‘Why are you being so nice to me?’

‘I was paid.’ 

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve had people be nice to me all my life b’cos someone paid ‘em. That’s not it.’

Pree twisted his mouth wryly. Drunks were distressingly insightful at times, and he was always a fool for a lost cause. 

‘Maybe I am just a glutton for punishment, my love,’ Pree said. ‘Go to sleep. In the morning….’

It would be what? Better? No, it wouldn't be, She would still be in disgrace and in exile, a drug addict and a killer. The only difference would be that she would be a day older and have a hangover. 

‘In the morning, wake up,’ he said, patting her shoulder. 

She sighed and went to sleep, hugging her bottle of Hokk to her chest like a doll or a lover. Pree watched her for a second, wondering what to do with her. Then something shattered downstairs and someone roared with anger, and he headed back downstairs to deal with whatever it was.


	2. Chapter 2

Pawter and Dutch

‘For me,’ Pree had said.

‘Please,’ Pree had said.

So what else could Dutch do but say yes? She owed Pree, owed him in all those small, peculiar ways that you only notice when the debt gets called in. So here she was, flying his latest charity project (the, what, fifth since it had been Dutch and Johnny?) out to sponsor them at the RAC.

‘Ugh. Did we really have to leave this early?’ Pawter groaned, dropping into the chair next to Dutch. It was Johnny’s usual seat, but he’d grinned and waved his room-chit at her. Room, RAC short for the Required Off-Duty Observation Mandate - which meant he had to get two days official down-time before he could get any more jobs. 

Still, the trip gave her a chance to feel out the Royal’s new in-house doc - the one who’d just turned up and moved in while Dutch was out on a job. 

‘Lucy, let me know when we get to the RAC space?’ she said.

‘Of course, Dutch,’ Lucy said in her programmed-to-be-pleasant mellifluous voice. 

Back home, no one would ever think of letting an unpleasant tone fall on a Prince’s ear. Until the day he’d choked to death on Khylen’s knife, Dutch’s husband had never had anything unpleasant happen to, in, or nearby him.

‘Want breakfast?’ Dutch asked.

Pawter raised a perfectly plucked brow. ‘You cook?’ she said. One hand waved at Dutch, from her curls to her boots. ‘Along with all that?’

‘Nothing fancy,’ Dutch lied. She could cook a six course, high-festival banquet, and poison one dish out of a 100 plates. ‘But when you live with Johnny, you have to learn.’

‘Men,’ Pawter said, rolling her eyes. ‘Useless, except for in bed. Am I right?’

Actually, Johnny loved cooking. The problem was if you didn’t want to sit down every night to some exotic, creepy fish chowder froth and hokk-leaf chips experiment, you had to insist on taking turns. Let Pawter find that out for herself, if she hung around she probably would.

Over coffee and shuck-egg omelettes, Dutch found out - reluctantly - that she rather liked Pawter. The girl was a clueless, spoilt princess, but there but for Khylen went Yala. Besides, Westerly couldn’t afford to turn their nose up at doctors who were willing to give up the luxury of Qresh.

Give it a few years, Pawter would get tired of the shit, the dirt, and stitching together RAC agents who’d gotten stupid or lucky. She’d pack up her kit and run back home, back to polishing wrinkles off Seyahs faces and lifting their asses. Until then, Dutch stabbed a chunk of lab reconstructed eggs and popped it into her mouth, maybe the girl could stick around.

In the RAC, they put Pawter through her paces on a hologrammatic patient, plucking gobbets of flesh out of an opened up cavity. Usually when Dutch saw those organs waved around someone was dying, but Pawter must have been doing something right. The doctors overseeing the test were nodding, at least.

Turin stood next to her. He was silent, an old game that he still hadn’t learned didn’t work on her, as he watched Pawter work. Old habits ticked over in the back of Dutch’s brain, cataloguing his weaknesses - the faint lag in a rebuilt knee, the stiff shoulder that restricted his range of movement - in case she needed to kill him.

Sometimes she thought it didn’t matter how far she ran from Khylen, how long she stayed away. He was always there, in that dark part of her mind that he’d trained to see everyone as either a threat, a target, or both.

‘You vouch for her?’ Turin asked.

Dutch snorted. Maybe she liked Pawter, and she definitely owed Pree, but not enough to go on record that the woman was good RAC material. That could come back to bite someone in the ass.

‘I don’t know her,’ she said. ‘I’m just here to put her forward for employment, from what I’ve seen she’s a good doctor. Pree’s boys and girls at the Royal have no complaints. Not about her anyhow.’

Turin pursed his lips and sucked his teeth. ‘I’ll consider it.’

He turned and strode away, boot heels echoing off the tiled floor. Dutch rolled her eyes after him and looked back in on the surgery. As she watched, something lashed out of the body cavity and latched onto Pawter’s wrist. She squeaked and jumped back, flapping her hand. The room was soundproofed, but the watching doctor was cracking up.

That was a good sign. They didn’t pull pranks on people they were going to send off with a flea in their ear.

Back on Westerly, Dutch stood Pawter a drink to congratulate her. They weren’t friends, but she did like her. Maybe that’s why it hit her so hard when she found out the truth. It wasn’t like she could throw stones at anyone for murder, but Pawter had every chance to not be a killer. She’d just flushed it away.


	3. Chapter 3

Dutch and Johnny

 

Captain Jarel and the Skyknights. The Justice Hunters. Even a four-issue series from some far off quadrant called Bell Hard: the RAC Agent. Johnny Jaqobis had read them all. Only he was pretty sure that none of them would stand at their mom’s grave and feel...relief. Nothing else, just a hollow bubble that was glad it was over in a great big space of nothing much at all.

 

In fact, Captain Jarel’s whole thing was that she was looking for the people who had framed her mother for treason and…

 

He stopped himself, rubbing his thumb along the bridge of his nose. Ok, it turned out there was a lower place to go than he had already been. And it was caring more about a comic book character than his own dead mother.

 

The attendant cleared their throat. ‘Ah, do you want us to wait any longer, Mr Jaqobis? Perhaps your brother is delayed at the airport.’

 

John looked at the narrow featured young girl, all pity and trying to buy into his lies. They both knew that his brother was a useless asshole who wasn't coming. Eight years ago, Johnny would have made excuses for him. Four years ago, even. Maybe even two, he’d never expected D’avin to come to their Dad’s funeral. Now he was all out, and there was no point in keeping this poor girl here any longer. In a room that smelled like old grief and fresh formalin.

 

‘No,’ he said. ‘I don't think so.’

 

Then, because the girl looked so crushed on his behalf, he lied some more. ‘He’s in the army,’ he said. ‘He’d be here if he could, but if they’ve been deployed…’

 

The girl looked intensely relieved, and John stepped up to take one last look at his mother. He had loved her, she had just been a long time dying and he’d hurt all he could scrape out of himself. She’d been beautiful once, before Dad had let her down, her favourite son had run off, and she’d gotten sick, and the slick of formalin brought the ghost of it back.

 

‘She did her best,’ he said.

 

Not the best eulogy ever, but he couldn't think of anything else. The girl seemed to accept it as enough, asking ‘would you like that on the plaque’, as she activated the formalin. John looked away from his mother’s dissolution - although he couldn't get the smell of it out of his nose for days - and tried to think of anything sadder than that being on her final resting place.

 

‘No. I…’ He stopped. Tried again. ‘Just he'd name, thank you.’

 

When he looked back, his mother was gone and there were three thin bone wafers lying on the table. He didn't want any of them, but under the girl’s expectant eye he took two. One for him, one for his dutiful, soldier brother. In the end, he buried them in the tiny, scrub of garden outside their house. It was the only place he’d ever thought she was happy.

 

Then he grabbed a kitbag of old clothes and his favourite comics, and left. The old hauler that Dad had used for scrap was on its last legs, the bed of it nearly dragged on the ground and he had to stop twice to let the engine cool down and wait for the smell of burning coolant to air out of the cab. He sold it for scrap - with a flicker of guilt for all the good years it had given them - and headed to the docks.

 

A freighter had just come down, filling the station with floating pallets and impatient crewhands with cash in their pockets and no booze in their bellies. The dock officials were too busy with them to pay much attention to one stocky guy with a turned up collar and a use-worn kit bag on his back - even if he did look like the Jaqobis kid who’d been fired and banned after the shuttle disappeared. 

 

It hadn’t been fair. He  had  been guilty, but they hadn’t been able to prove that. They’d fired him because he was a debtor, because he couldn’t sign or hold others to a contract. Until he cleared his inherited credit record, he wasn’t a citizen and couldn’t partake of the benefits of citizens.

 

Solvency was a religious doctrine around here.

 

That’s why he had to go. It wasn’t that he wanted to leave, not like this. He  wanted  to study engineering, to build starships and space stations. Except debtors couldn’t enrol in classes, couldn’t maticulate, couldn’t hold down any job that wasn’t hand to mouth. Or crooked. That was always an option, but even that was getting tighter - he owed too much and there was stuff he didn’t want to do.

 

John ducked behind a hauler, riding it off the public docks into the private slipways. He’d seen the ship arrive a couple of days earlier, all deadly, sleek manta ray lines of her. Way too pretty a girl for the idle rich lovebirds on her, following some ridiculous astronomy reading that had deemed  this  planet to be fortuitous for new beginnings.

 

Fortuitous enough, John figured, they’d get a new ship out of it. Out in the town sirens went off, shrilling their warning of fire, plague or murder. The few people hanging out on the docks hurried off to rubberneck. See? It was a fortunate day for everyone. 

 

John walked over to the ship and slapped his cracker on the side, murmuring sweet-talk as it burned through the ship’s security measures. After a second, the cargo ramp creaked open. John jumped up before it hit the ground and scrambled inside, hitting the close button again.

 

‘That’s is, baby,’ he said. ‘You and me are going to have a….blast.’

 

The last word was a not-particularly manly squeak. The tall girl in white and red  wedding finery, train tied up around her waist, pointed a blaster at his face. Her face was streaked with tears and paint, and John realised abruptly that there was no red in her outfit. It was all blood.

 

‘Hi, hi,’ he said. ‘Look, this isn’t…’

 

She hooked an eyebrow at him, so dubious it cut through the tear raddled make-up. He hesitated and then dropped his hands. ‘OK, so it is,’ he said. ‘What it looks like.’

 

‘Get off my ship.’

 

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I should do that…’ He took a step backwards and then stopped, fidgeting in place. ‘Are you OK? I mean, you’re obviously  not  ok, but is there anything I can do?’

 

He didn’t know why. She was a stranger, and while she was beautiful there was something too destroyed in her face to think about her like that. John supposed it was just because he was used to taking care of people, or just that she looked like she’d had an even worse day than he did.

 

‘Can you start this ship?’ she asked. ‘I can’t...they hadn’t added my voiceprint to the security bypass.’

 

Johnny nodded. ‘I can do that. Can you put the gun down? I won’t hurt you.’

 

She laughed. It was bitter enough to sting, but she put the gun down. John headed up into the cockpit, the girl on his heels. He slid into the pilot’s seat, leather soft as a hand on his ass.

 

‘What’s her name?’ he asked, pulling his bag into his lap.

 

‘...Lucent Daybreak after Hope is Found.’

 

‘Oh hell no,’ John said, hooking himself up to the console and getting to work. ‘That’s a rubbish name, isn’t it? Some big, old cruise ship, that’s who gets that called that. How about Hope? Naw, a quick girl like you, needs a quick name. What about Lucy.’

 

Everything lit up, and a sweet, mellow voice murmured. ‘I like the name Lucy,’ she said. ‘What should I call you?’

 

‘John,’ he said

 

‘Thank you, John,’ Lucy said. ‘Do you want to leave? We don’t have clearance.’

 

‘I’ll fix that,’ John said. He glanced at the girl. ‘Where do you want to go?’

 

She looked… Not lost, blank for a second. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, voice twisted tight. ‘Everything’s gone.’

 

Two deep breaths and then she looked at John. ‘Where were you going?’

 

‘I...anywhere,’ he said. ‘I just want to get out of here, go somewhere I can have a life. Any life.’

 

She nodded and stood up. ‘Go,’ she said, setting the blaster down. ‘One of us should get away. There’s nowhere I can run too.’

 

‘Hey, wait,’ John said, he scrambled up out of the seat. He reached for her arm and thought better of it as she spun on him. ‘Try. Come on, we can go anywhere. Staying here isn’t going to end well.’

 

She stared at him, eyes narrowed. ‘Aren’t you even going to ask me what happened? What I did?’

 

‘No,’ he said. ‘I trust you.’

 

‘You don’t know me.’

 

He grinned at her. ‘See? That’s why you have to come with me, I’m a trusting fool. I’ll lose the ship to a pickpocket.’

 

‘There’s no need to worry about that, John,’ Lucy said smoothly. ‘I have reset all security parameters as requested. No one else should be able to access me now.’

 

John glanced around and then back at the woman in the wedding dress. ‘Between us, we can dutch the books. Whoever is chasing you won’t be looking for two of us. You can stop strangers rolling me for my bone marrow. Come on, you’ll be doing be a favour. We don't have to stay here. We can just fly away, and never look back.’


	4. Chapter 4

John and D’avin

 

Sweat and pain, the need to win and the chance you won’t.

 

D’avin rocked back on his heel and caught a larynx crushing blow against his forearm. The impact jarred up to his shoulder, registered with a cold evaluation of risk, and he pivoted to hammer the heel of his foot into his opponent’s knee. Bone splintered and the man went down. D’avin snapped his neck, vertebra still vulnerable, and bounced back to his feet, already turning to the next fight.

 

The trainers would drag the injured man away. He would be back tomorrow if they thought he was worth it, knee and neck rebuilt, or tossed with the garbage if they decided he wasn’t.

 

‘One out of a hundred RAC agents are worth training for Level 7,’ Khylen had told them. He was precision and perfection, and D’avin remembered hating him. Not now. Loyalty so hot it was like love filled him as Khylen spoke, drumming in his ears like a new heart. ‘Out of those, one in six survive the training process. So do well, do not disappoint me.’

 

D’avin flexed his arm, testing his jarred shoulder, and tried to feel hatred. He  knew  he didn’t want to be here, he  knew  he hadn’t volunteered for this. Not again. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but training and obedience, the body moving through its paces even as the man tried to hold onto the bits of him.

 

The next opponent was a square-muscled man with a broad, aristocratic face. His hair was cropped and his body sheathed in the same vitals-monitoring grey that D’avin wore. Not so Fancy, anymore. D’avin left the bodies to their duties, sliding down into the shallow pools of memory he’d managed to hide.

 

Looking back, D’avin couldn’t remember any time that he’d had to take care of Johnny. Even as a baby Johnny had been a self-contained little person, able to entertain himself with a rattling, paint scoured toy from the charity bins for longer than D’avin could manage as a grown man. He had never needed much taking care off, which was good since the Jaqobis family made an Etrusci sandwraith look nurturing - and they used their spawn as bait. Oh, he’d had Johnny’s back when he needed it and he’d lied his ass blue for him - but actually take care  him?  

 

No, that had been Johnny’s job. It had been Johnny who distracted Da with questions when the old man lit into D’avin for some sin real or imagined (usually real, to be fair). It was Johnny who stole a salvage of parts from the junkyard and somehow made them into a cloaking device for Red Delaney, buying the gangster off before he cut D’avin’s sac off to use as a purse.

 

It had been Johnny who hauled D’avin’s ass out of that gladiator ship - because he could run his mouth off as much as he wanted about his plans, but D’avin knew he’d never have left that ship alive under his own steam - and gave him a new family.

 

The thought of Dutch gave him a pang of regret. He didn't have many ‘what ifs’ scenarios in his life, a benefit of a lifetime habit of salting the emotional ground behind you, but that was one. Oh, it would have probably ended in disillusionment and disdain, with a bit of blood to sweeten the pot since Durch was involved. He loved her, but when had that ever made a difference? The thing was that he didn't  know it for sure. The chances were slim, but they were chances.

 

Had been chances. That was gone now. He had Level Seven, it was all he needed.

 

He felt his chest cramp again, with a queer, aimless terror. It was gone. He’d lost something else to the spreading agent in his bones, his brain losing hold on something that he was  sure  he’d cared about.

 

Gone now, though, and he couldn’t even remember why he’d wanted to keep it. There was just the hollow where it had been, and a regret that faded even as he watched.

 

Him and the agent who used to be Fancy both hit the ground at the same time - one trying to breath through collapsed lungs while the other blinked glassily at the world through a skin of blood.

 

D’avin waited for the trainers to come and decide his fate for the day. He wasn’t afraid, he wasn’t confident, he wasn’t  anything.  Level 7 had taken most of that, but it couldn’t find its way through the old scars to the memories before Jager. Whatever feelings he had about those memories were being pruned away, but the memories stayed.

 

It had been a winter day and D’avin thought he’d been angry. He wanted to do something stupid, something destructive, and just for once he didn’t want his kid brother pulling his ass out of the fire.

 

‘Do me a favour, Johnny,’ memory-D’avin spat in frustration. ‘Just leave me to burn.’

 

It was all D’avin wanted, the last thing that he wanted. Johnny had to leave him to burn. He didn’t want his little brother here, even if the reason  why  was gone.

  
  



End file.
